News Story

As of Friday last week the Patch 2 entered Beta testing for Total War: Rome II. The official wiki for the RTS series details the current changelog, with the Campaign Map and 'AI turn time' high on the list.

Right now late games turning into sieges within PC CPUs as turn movements and actions take an age to run through. There are fixes and tweaks to tactical AI as well.

Current campaign progress is compatible with Patch 2 but they won't be if you try to use them on a pre-patch version of the game, warns the studio.

Creative Assembly are attempting to trim the fat when it comes to letting the AI have a bash at moving armies around, recruiting agents and then trying to stab you in the back. GPU optimisations are another warm welcome, flanked by unit speed changes and morale breaking points; it's a sizeable list.

• A new "Limited" option has been added to the "Show AI Player Moves" settings in Single Player an Multiplayer Campaign modes, this enables the player to see all movement of enemy factions, all movement within the players regions, and all movement within sea that the player has ports in during the AI turns.

• Fix for "Level of Detail" distances scaling incorrectly when the "Field of View" is changed which reduces the chance of the "Intelligent Zoom" N key, causing "zombie like” low quality textures on unit faces in battles.

• A new warning message has been added to loading screen to inform the player when graphics memory is running low, and the game is downgrading the players graphics settings. This can be overriden, allowing the game to use system memory for graphics (VRAM) by ticking the "Unlimited video memory" option in the graphics menu.

• Fix for defending armies under AI control grouping together at the edge of their deployment zone, during Ambush battles when the player choses to wait before attacking them.

• Improved AI and scripting in the Raphia Historical Battle.

• Fixed a bug preventing the player from progressing in The Invasion of Samnium prologue chapter, if they had spent all of their funds before being instructed to recruit a General (and therefore having no funds to do so).

• The Attribute increases for an agent accompanying an army now activate its associated effects on the general of that army in Campaign modes.

• Improved AI collision detection with Deployables in battle.

• In Multiplayer Campaign mode, one player can no longer cancel recruitment during the other players turn.

• The order of events leading up to the Battle of Bovianum in the prologue have been re-scripted. The player now gets multiple turns to construct siege equipment.

• Fixed issues with not enough time being given for certain advisor lines to play in different languages in the prologue.

• Fix for units floating in the air while climbing siege towers in battle, when the tower is placed on a slope.

• Attacking siege ladders will no longer clip through the gate house in the siege on Bovianum battle during The Invasion of Samnium chapter in Prologue Campaign.

• The victory screen in Multiplayer Campaign mode now shows the correct title for both players.

• The Basilica of Vulcan religious building now applies the correct bonus to recruitment cost reduction in Campaign Mode.

• Added level indicators to the Sanctuary of Austro & Sanctuary of Fraujaz shrines in Campaign mode and the Encyclopaedia.

• Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations.

• The "Quaestor" achievement should now unlock correctly, when completing the Prologue campaign

• Fixed the inability to select the previous faction, when an army is automatically loaded due to a battle type change during battle setup.

• Improved the clarity of stats displayed for Slaves Economic Effect when placing the mouse over "Slaves" in the Province Details panel on the Campaign map.

• Fix for rare cases of broken save games in Campaign mode.

• Fix for Campaign mode bug, where a hostile agent and the players' ship became stuck in the same position, with neither one able to move.

• Fix for very rare agent pathfinding issue, which caused the game progression to become impossible in Campaign modes.

• Removed the ability to loading the wrong type of units into a battle from a saved army pre-set in Custom Battle mode.

• In Multiplayer battle setup, unit restrictions related to "Battle type" are no longer desynchronised between the host and client, so only the correct units can be chosen.

• Defending armies in an Ambush Battle can no longer load an army containing *Fixed Artillery and other Siege Equipment.

• Fixed the tooltip displayed when placing the mouse over the garrison in enemy settlements, while the settlement is under siege.

• The Public Order "Change per turn" stat is now displayed as the sum of all of its "Contributing Factors" on the Province Info panel in Campaign mode.

• Right-clicking on the Aggressive, Balanced and Protective stance buttons when Autoresolving a battle in campaign mode will now take the player to the Encyclopedia, where these stances are explained in more detail.

• More detailed descriptions added to the tooltips for the "Occupy, Loot and Raze" buttons after successfully capturing a settlement on the Campaign map.

• Improved icons for Province Effects in Campaign mode.

• Fixed an error with uploading stats when a multiplayer battle was ended prematurely.

• The "Force March" movement effect on the campaign map (looks like a whirlwind) are now correctly removed from the screen when the AI move their army.

• Correction to the Assault Hexeres unit card in the Parthia faction during battles, which had no colour mask and appeared black.

• The buttons to change pages in the Leaderboards menu have been fixed, so more players can be seen on the Leaderboards.

• The Provinces list in Campaign mode can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel.

• Units in a recruitment queue, in a province with its capital under siege, now have an "infinity sign" icon to indicate that the "turns to recruit" is infinite while the siege is maintained in Campaign mode.

• In the "Controls" menu under the "Settings" option in the main menu, when the player modifies the keyboard controls, and saves them, the new name for these controls is now replaces the "Classic Total War" name.

• Added a tooltip to say "Left-click to remove unit from recruitment queue" for units that are queued for hire in Campaign mode.

• Added a tooltip to make ruined buildings more obvious in Campaign mode.

• Added tooltips to "Weather" and "Time of Day" settings in the Custom Battle menu.

• Fixes and corrections for text in the encyclopaedia have been made.

• Minor text and grammar corrections in Campaign Modes.

• Fix for some German text not fitting into the available text space in the campaign mode user interface.